


A Dying Business

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Ghost Sex, M/M, Necrophilia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 12:11:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9548486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Hux is an undertaker. Ben is a sexy corpse. Sparks fly and spirits rise from the grave and most of it is Snoke's fault somehow.





	

Hux had received the body of young Ben Solo- a splendid creature, it must be said, in the prime of his life, not yet thirty-- and spent days lovingly preparing it for interment: patching the skin back together and fitting dislocated bones into their sockets, washing the whole thing carefully and thoroughly with strong soap and a soft flannel and dressing it in the tasteful suit of burial clothes the young man's parents had selected, cleaning and trimming the fingernails, running a razor over the last stubble poor Ben would ever grow. He'd parted the thick dark hair and combed it neatly, dusted the pallid face with powder, added a subtle touch of rouge to the lips and cheeks. 

He'd arranged the washed and dressed and mended body in the elaborate casket with its padded lid and swags of dark velvet drapery and settled Ben's head into the divot cut for it in the ribbon-trimmed velvet pillow. He'd presided over the calling hours and the funeral, watched six white-gloved pallbearers hand the casket into the hearse and four magnificent black horses with velvet-muffled harnesses draw it after them to the churchyard. He saw the graveside service performed, the casket lowered, the earth heaped over it. He'd consoled Ben's parents and collected his fee and thrown in a bundle of crape for the front door at no extra charge, and that, as far as Hux was concerned, was the end of it.

Imagine his surprise, then, when he wakes one night-- having fallen asleep on the divan in his parlor with a book in his lap and the lamp still burning- to find Ben Solo standing there watching him. Standing by the fireplace, his black suit tarnished by the grave, his shoes trailing clods of dirt. His face is sad and serious, still somewhat garish with rouge, and his hands are folded before him; the nails, Hux notes, are still clean.

"Hell's bells!" Hux cries out. "What are you doing here?" He's gone mad, of course, or else he's dreaming, but one thing he knows for certain is that there's no way in blazes he's actually seeing what he thinks he's seeing.

"I had to call on you," Ben answers, and his voice isn't spectral in the slightest, but resonant with living warmth. Though Hux had never heard Ben speak while he was alive, the sound of his voice is somehow familiar.

"You're dead. I prepared your body myself, I sold your parents that beautiful coffin. They spared no expense, you know. You rode in state to the graveyard. A new shiny black hearse all decked out in heaps of white lilies and drawn by four purebred black Percherons, their manes plaited with white satin ribbons. It truly was a sight."

"I know." Ben kneels and begins to unlace his shoes, and in his movements there is no trace of the injuries that sent him to the grave before his time, no broken neck or cracked skull or crushed ribs, no shifting of shattered bones to be heard. A hunting accident, and a very foolish one, though Ben's parents had been reticent with the details. The boy had been drunk, Hux is certain of it.

"Why are you here? I treated you with the utmost respect, as I do all my charges. I did everything I could for you. You were sent off with great dignity, in the most current fashion. What more could you possibly want?"

"I saw you," Ben says, still methodically removing his shoes; real leather shoes, not the chintzy cardboard slippers usually worn for the last great occasion; laces up the back, much easier to slip onto a corpse's feet. "I saw you preparing me, how gentle you were with my body, how you touched me as if I were alive, as if the feel of my skin beneath your hands made your heart beat faster. You stroked my hair and touched my face and imagined that I were asleep lying there, not on the cooling board but in your own bed. You imagined... But I don't need to recount your thoughts, you remember them."

"I should be in bed, and so should you." Hux closes his book and sets it aside. He closes his eyes for a long time and opens them again, but Ben is still standing there in his stocking feet, unbuttoning his suit jacket. "What do you need, Ben? Why won't you sleep?"

“I suppose I'm unsatisfied.” The jacket falls to the floor in a very tangible-looking heap, and Ben's cravat and vest soon go the same way. In no time at all he's stripped to the waist, and now Hux can see the evidence of his injuries, the layers of blue and purple bruises over his trampled ribs, the neat slit between his pectoral muscles where Hux had closed him up after filling his chest cavity with cotton wadding. Ben doesn't seem decayed, however, and as he moves closer Hux detects only the slightest musty smell of earth.

“There's nothing more I can do for you. Leave me in peace.”

“Actually, there's a great deal you've left unfinished.” Ben reaches out-- remarkably steady hands, for a corpse- and touches Hux's shoulder, lets his hand drift down and linger at the opening of Hux's dressing gown. His skin is cold, but dry. Hux grasps Ben's wrist and finds it firm and solid but completely bloodless, no pulse beating beneath the surface, branching veins like dry riverbeds.

“You great fool,” Hux says. “You've risen from the grave just to gratify your basest instincts? Didn't you do enough tomcatting around when you were alive?”

“Not nearly enough.” Ben pauses, withdraws, clasps both hands in front of him again, twisting them nervously over each other. “In point of fact, I would say, none at all.”

“You're a virgin, then. You refuse to go to your eternal rest so unspoiled.” Somehow, with no blood in his veins, Ben blushes.

“You kissed me,” Ben says, very quietly. He's sitting down now, next to Hux's feet at the opposite end of the divan, and Hux admires the sheen of lamplight on his strong pale shoulders, notes as he did before the scattered marks on his skin, the constellations of moles and freckles. “That was the first time... isn't it funny, that I had to die before anyone would kiss me?”

“I didn't--” Hux remembers it, with an anxious frisson of guilt, a feeling of having betrayed the sacred trust placed in him, his obligation to respect and honor the dead. He had kissed Ben's lips while his body was laid out under the white sheet, had indeed pretended to himself that Ben's sleep were the ordinary kind, that he had drifted off blissfully in Hux's bed after a night of the finest and most rarefied pleasure any man would dare to imagine. Only briefly, the merest touch, and it was cold and tasted of nothing, because Ben wasn't there anymore, but is he here now? Could this really be him, and not simply another of Hux's flights of fancy?

“I remember. You wanted me, as I had been. What a pity you only saw me as a corpse.”

“You were beautiful. Lovelier still when you were alive, I suspect.”

“Go to bed,” says Ben, suddenly decisive. “I'll wait for you there.” He stands and walks, every bit as a flesh-and-blood man stands and walks, and the knob of Hux's bedroom door turns in his hand every bit as a doorknob turns in a living man's hand. Resolutely, Hux closes his eyes; he'll sleep again, then wake from this strange dream.

He opens his eyes, realizing he's nodded off, but it's still the black middle of the night and Ben's clothes and shoes are still where he left them in a heap by the fireplace. Hux rises to his feet like a somnambulist, opens his bedroom door as quietly as possible as if Ben is sleeping inside and Hux is afraid to wake him. And he's there, outlined in moonlight, his dark head on Hux's pillow, Hux's duvet pulled up over him and slipping artfully from one bare shoulder. Hux doesn't know what will happen to him, what sort of bargain he's sealing or dark ritual he's satisfying by climbing into bed with a dead man, but he strips out of his dressing gown and offers himself-- naked, the clean sheets smooth and cool on his bare skin- to whatever it is that Ben has become.

“Do you still want me?” Ben turns to him, reaches out to grasp Hux's hand and presses it to his chest, directly over his beatless heart. “Will you have me now?”

“You poor boy. I'm sorry you came to this.” Hux touches Ben's face, recalls shaving it to prepare him for his viewing, drawing the straight razor over Ben's skin, and he could not have taken more pains if it had been a living man's throat under his blade. Hux had not considered the possibility that Ben was watching him, that some non-corporeal aspect of him could see everything that Hux was doing, though he could hardly have been more careful if he had.

“You were so kind to me.” Ben turns his head, nuzzling contentedly into Hux's palm, eyes closed in bliss. “The way you touched me, it was so...”

“Professional. I treated you no differently than I would any of the dead who are entrusted to me.” Except for the kiss, he doesn't go around kissing corpses, for heaven's sake, it happened once and he'll never again be so foolish, but now that he has Ben's permission he kisses him again. Cold lips, but the inside of his mouth is warm, and he groans lasciviously when Hux's tongue penetrates it. Ben's hands are big and cold and clumsy, but Hux allows them to stroke his sides, clasp his shoulders, cup his face. They're both naked under the covers, and Ben's prick is hard and warming against Hux's thigh.

“I remember this.” Hux grasps him with one hand, begins to stroke him gently and Ben cries out with irrepressible delight as if this is exactly what he crawled out of the grave for, as if he'd defied every law of God and nature and decency just to feel Hux's slim hand wrapped around his cock. “What a pity, I thought, that it would never again stiffen and rise to a lover's touch. What a shame that a pretty cock like this should be tucked under the earth moldering away until Judgment Day. How senseless, what a waste, a gorgeous boy like you throwing his life away for some foolish sport.”

“I didn't...” Ben's breathing heavily, one hand clasped around Hux's wrist, holding it gently as Hux strokes him. “It was an accident, I never meant to...”

“Your horse had to be shot as well, as I recall. What a stupid waste indeed, two beautiful creatures in the full bloom of their youth and strength.”

“Honestly.” Ben half-smiles, his eyes keen and dark and shining queerly in the moonlight. “You think I'm beautiful?”

“You were beautiful. Now you're a worm-eaten corpse, or possibly the devil or something.”

“The devil?”

“Isn't this exactly the way he would tempt me? He was tempting me, when your body was laid out on my cooling board. Beautiful, white, almost as perfect as it had been in life. What I might have done, were I not the generally decent and upright man that I am. And perhaps that desecration would have settled your spirit, and we wouldn't be in this situation now.”

“I can think of nothing more unpleasant.” Ben spreads his legs encouragingly, moves Hux's hand up and down on his cock. “I'm much closer to myself now. I'm almost what I was.” He seems quite proud of himself, proud that he's managed this trick, and indeed Hux has never in his long career of laying corpses in the ground known a single one to come springing back up. It is, he supposes, quite impressive.

“I want you. What you were.” Hux straddles Ben, feels that stiff cock spring against his belly. He allows Ben to rub on him, Ben's hands on his shoulders, their mouths pressed together and the taste is a bit dank and cellar-y but not altogether unpleasant. Ben's tongue moves between Hux's lips, parts them gently. Ben's hands skim the length of Hux's body, from his shoulders down his sides to his hips and down to his thighs and up again to his rump where they settle in, stroking and squeezing, patting lightly at the firm flesh, and Ben grunts his approval and starts to open Hux with one (somehow) spit-slicked finger pressed inside him.

At the moment that Ben's cock enters him, Hux is thinking of the peace and silence of death, of Ben's body in its perfect repose, the mahogany coffin and its tufted lining and rosettes of white satin and Ben's black hair on the white velvet pillow. All that hushed softness, the riot of life stilled, Ben's sleeping face innocent of merriment or sorrow. Expressionless, where in life- so Hux was told-- it had been so changeable. Wicked, grinning, laughing, rejoicing. Hux can imagine it, can see it now as Ben grasps him at the hips and thrusts up into him, his eyes shut tight with pleasure and all his crooked teeth bared.

“It's good, isn't it?” Ben asks him; panting with exertion now, some vague dry memory of blood pounding away in his pulseless wrists. He'd had all his fluids drained from him, of course, all his internal organs removed and discarded but Hux is still imagining a slurry of putrefaction spilling from his abdominal cavity, skin and muscle peeling away where they'd been slit before; he sees the bloat and bluish tinge of decay, has to swallow back bile and clutch at Ben's shoulders and cry out for mercy on the off chance that there's any sort of god that would allow this to happen. Ben only takes this as encouragement, and Hux finds himself thrown onto his back with his head dangling off the foot of the bed and his legs in the air, and what a ridiculous dream this is, of course he's still dreaming, and if he's dreaming he ought to enjoy himself, but Ben's skin where it touches his is dry and cold and stiff, dessicated like pressed flower petals, and although Ben's still panting it's shallow and automatic, doesn't sound as if he's really drawing breath.

“I'm sorry,” Hux mutters, his breath still being driven from him by Ben's enthusiastic thrusts. “Whatever I tempted, whatever I awoke... let it satisfy itself, let it satisfy me and then leave me forever and never again walk the earth, let it be satisfied, please let it return to the grave...”

“It's only me.” One of Ben's cold hands brushes Hux's face, fingertips tracing his jaw, a clumsy attempt at tenderness. “Just Ben. I'm what I was.”

“You can't be. What else are you?”

“Just me. Don't be afraid.”

“Please...” Hux is cold and terrified and about to come, and Ben is leaning into him with all his considerable strength. He'll wake up now, any second now he'll wake up, he's dozed off in the parlor again and everything is just the way it was and the dead young man he'd admired is sleeping safely in the ground and not manifesting corporeally in his bedroom for the sole purpose of fucking him.

“I'm sorry if it's not... if I haven't done it well.” Ben lets out a funny little gasp, and Hux feels him come; an odd sensation, as his spend is as cold as the rest of him.

“I'm frankly amazed you've done it at all.” Hux finally has to laugh at the absurdity of all this, and Ben looks momentarily wounded and then breaks out grinning again. He starts to extricate himself from Hux, nearly falls off the bed, leans down to retrieve the covers he'd thrown to the floor and gives every indication that he's settling in for the night, which Hux isn't sure he ought to allow. It's one thing to be fucked by a dead man, quite another to cozy up with one for a pleasant night's sleep.

“That's it, now. You're taken care of.” Hux rolls over, and Ben slides in close to him, drapes a heavy arm around his shoulders.

“Can't I sleep with you?”

“You have your own bed. That's no cheap casket, you know. Fully lined, very comfortable.”

“It's so cold there. In that hole in the ground.”

“It's where you belong. It's what your foolishness earned you. Now go.”

“I'll go.” Ben releases Hux, slowly, and slowly slides his long bare body out of bed. “But I won't go back to my grave.” Hux's last memory before he falls asleep is of Ben standing there pulling his trousers on, his reflection moonlit and vague in the dressing-table mirror.


End file.
